tiny baby expedient fried potatoes

Considering the amount of time I spend worried that I’m not able to complete tasks efficiently enough it’s astounding how quickly I can swing from convincing myself I need to move to California to convincing myself that perhaps I am overreacting to a bad day and I need a glass of water and eight hours’ sleep. It’s a speedy full circle, a loop-de-loop of consideration that plants me back where I began with a derisive little laugh. Sometimes it’s Maine or Alaska or Mexico or Spain (Galicia, lol) but yesterday it was California because it’s cold here and because my roommate just moved away and I’m sad and I don’t deal with people I love moving to California very well, quite frankly I’m tired of it, and would like to put a ban on all moves for at least six months, ideally a year. If you are my friend please take note. I like to pick myself up and toss myself around between geographies but when other people do it themselves it’s too much for me to take. Anyways Hallie is gone and I’m going to see her in a few short months and also I’m going to Mexico next week so everything is really fine but I’ve been experiencing this pure unadulterated sort of sadness and moping around a bit and making everything about me and also making these potatoes I'm going to tell you about. What I’m saying is this is what I made once she had left and the house was empty and dinner was most certainly going to happen in bed. You understand.

We can skip over the part where we talk about potatoes being a Wintry Comfort Food because we know that already and we can just get to the point where I tell you that this is a very expedient way to cook them, maybe the most expedient, when hunger or sadness or drunkenness or whatever means that you need to turn this starchy inedible lumpy thing into food, and quickly. I’ve done this a lot at 2 AM with makeup smeared around into inappropriate places on my face and beer stains on my dress and I’ve done it the next morning when my needs were equally dire but in a different way. I’ve eaten an enormous heap of them with nothing more than salt and ketchup and I’ve eaten them with runny eggs and even sometimes with cooked greens, if I’m feeling wild. They’re pan-fried potatoes, the closest I get to a hash brown in my own kitchen, and they are cut into very small pieces and fried in a cast-iron skillet in plenty of oil, seasoned with salt and not much else. Some sort of pepper, black or red, maybe. The pieces are small enough that once their faces are golden, their insides are cooked, which I suppose is a pretty basic thing, but it always makes me feel brilliant, how quickly and efficiently they become good. Maybe you’ve tried to fry big chunks of potatoes before and you got frustrated with middles that weren’t cooked through, and well, here I am with a better option, the dippin’ dots of taters.

Aside from their speediness the other nice thing about these potatoes is the surface area ratio, meaning that they have a high ratio of surface area to volume, meaning the majority of what you’re eating is salted crispy outsides, complemented by soft insides, rather than the other way around. (Sad are the diner hash browns with no crisp bits, just undersalted blobs of soft intermingled with chunks of onion.) Of course if you want more mush in yr mouth you can cook bigger chunks, or try a different recipe, lol. But the crispness thing we’ve got going on here is good, and a particularly nice balance to a runny yolk, if you feel like a runny yolk. I usually do, and this time I did.

I have two important things to say here. One of them is to please use enough oil. You want to coat your pan well, with a good slick of oil that will sizzle against your starch. Remember this is not a diet food. You also want to avoid crowding your potatoes, if you can. Crowding leads to steaming, which means faces that are not golden but instead pale and soft and sad (like my face, ha ha). You want crisp little faces. So use a big pan, or cook in batches, to avoid an enormous heap of potato bits vying for the attention of heat and oil in a small pan.

A thing I like to do which I learned from Mollie Katzen (much respect!!!!!) is to add onions at the end of cooking vegetables so they don’t burn too much. I do love me a good charred allium, but adding onions at the beginning here would just turn them into bitter and blackened and bothersome flecks once everything was done. SO, HERE, we slice our scallions and we add them at the end of cooking to soften them and char a few of them, or at least their corners, without fucking anything up. Okay.

When all of this was said and done I fried two eggs, also in cast iron, also in an aggressive amount of oil, this is roughly how I do it. On went some hot sauce and off we all went to bed.

Pan-Fried Potatoes

Potatoes, cleaned (but not peeled) and diced into very small pieces, maybe ¼ inch cubes, but really whatever you like. I usually slice mine into planks, then stack a few planks together and chop those, if that makes sense. You can probably use one medium potato per person, but really you can never have too much here, as they make for good leftovers, even when they’re cold. Small potatoes work too. Just decide how much you want. okay on to the next ingredient in this list!

Olive oil, a lot of it, and honestly try to buy some good stuff, if you can afford it, it makes a difference

Salt

Chili flakes or black pepper or both or neither

Sliced scallions or diced onions or diced shallots

Eggs, optional, any style, please express yourself
Hot sauce, ketchup, condiments of your choice

Heat a good slick of oil in a medium-to-large cast iron skillet (or sauté pan) over medium-high heat. Once it’s hot (toss in a potato cube and see if it sizzles), add the potatoes. Give them a good stir with a wooden spoon, and add a sprinkle of salt. Remember you can always add more salt once they’re cooked, so be mildly conservative here. Add some freshly cracked black pepper and chili flakes if you feel like it.

Let the potatoes sit for a minute or so, then push them around in the pan—really you just want to expose as much surface area, as many faces, to the pan as you can. Let them sit, push them around, let them sit, push them around. Things should sizzle and darken. Once the majority of the potatoes are a nice appealing golden brown, taste one; if you like it, add the scallions. If you don’t, add more salt or cook them for longer. If you’re worried about them burning before they’re fully cooked through, turn the heat down, but remember that potatoes can take a lot of heat. Once you’ve added the scallions, give another good stir and cook until they’ve softened and browned in places.

Cook your eggs, if you like. Scrambled is nice here too, but you really can’t beat a runny yolk soaking into crisp potatoes. Top with hot sauce and/or ketchup and eat somewhere cozy.